This particular machine has 24 megs of RAM. Incidentally, now that I'm
using the serial console, the installation programs for NetBSD 1.3.2
starts up just fine.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ross Harvey [mailto:ross@teraflop.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 25, 1998 5:08 PM
To: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org; port-alpha@netbsd.org
Subject: Re: error when running boot disk
> From: John Barbee <JBarbee@server5.singular.com>
>
> Loading netbsd.gz
> 3849336+882560 [85
>
>
> and then the screen blanks. the floppy is no longer being read and
the
> computer hangs. is something supposed to happen here or am i supposed
> to do something. nothing i type seems to make a difference.
>
> this is an alphastation 200
>
> i'm trying to run freebsd on an alpha, so i got the netbsd
installation
> disk and it hung. i sent mail to port-alpha@netbsd.org but it seems
to
> be an extremely quiet list. so i figured somebody here might be able
to
> help.
>
> From: John Birrell <jb@cimlogic.com.au>
>
> Try pulling out the graphics card, disconnecting the keyboard and
> connecting a serial console before powering up. If the machine boots,
> you've got the "unsupported graphics card" problem.
Well, you only waited three hours for a response from the NetBSD list,
and
you weren't even trying to run NetBSD. :-)
I've had several people tell me they had to unsubscribe from port-alpha
(@netbsd.org) because of the high volume, so I guess it is at just about
the right point...some people say it is too high and some say it is too
low.
Anyway, NetBSD supports that particular system quite well. A lot of the
NetBSD developers have one or even more than one of that exact
AlphaStation.
The boot code doesn't actually ever touch your drive or display hardware
directly...everything is done with console callbacks. So, it shouldn't
really matter at that point what graphics card you have, unless the SRM
console doesn't support it either and has some bizarre failure mode
where
it can interact and print but still manages to die early on.
Switching to a serial console is something you should do anyway, for
other
reasons, but right now it looks like you just have bad floppy media, or
some other problem affecting your hardware and/or console firmware. It
definitely doesn't look like a problem in the NetBSD boot code itself.
How
much RAM is in that system? Which version of the NetBSD install floppy
did
you use?
-- Ross Harvey
ross@netbsd.org